Trapped in Broken Maze
by Barbara Barnett
Summary: Post halfwit. House is deals with his chronic pain problem. HouseCuddy friendship.... Some references to events and discolsures in No Exit and Transitions. You don't have to read those first, but it helps in understanding Cuddy's relationship to House
1. Chapter 1

"What the hell were you thinking, House?" Cuddy was yelling; her tirade slapping House in the face like sleet on a freezing day. "First, lying to get yourself into a study that you knew you wouldn't qualify for and then letting the whole hospital believe you were dying…"

"We're all dying," House interrupted. Cuddy shot him daggers with her glare.

"…For what?! To, as Cameron told me…to get high? What, Vicodin not doing it for you anymore?" She gestured at him disgust, signaling an end to the rant.

She had been awaiting him, her fury rendering her unable to wait until morning. It was just past 2:00 a.m. She continued to stare at him, waiting for him to respond in some way; to offer some sort of explanation for what he had done. His eyes always told the truth, she knew. In them, he could never hide—not for very long. The initial harshness she saw in them dissipated into hurt and then shame.

"I wasn't doing it to get high." He stopped as if that were enough to say; that she would understand somehow. House did not want to be doing this now; the last 24 hours had been hard enough without having to justify himself. Cuddy reacted by sitting on his leather sofa, waiting for him to go on. "I thought we'd finished. I'm going to bed, so unless you're feeling frisky and want to join me, I'll trust that you'll let yourself out. Leave the key on the coffee table."

It was no one's business why, how and if he joined a clinical study. That they all felt it was their job to dig and delve into his own private matters, it was their problem that they were led astray. Maybe next time they wouldn't…

"House." Cuddy interrupted his thoughts, drawing his attention back down the hall to the living room where still she sat on the sofa. "Then why?"

House blew out a breath. He wasn't going to get rid of her that easily, he realized. Neither was explaining going to a simple task, dismissed with a moment's worth of offhand remarks. Defeated, he returned to her, sitting.

"I have to do something." It was a simple enough sentiment. And it was true, if his more recent liver panel results were to be believed. "I can't stay on the Vicodin…"

"No kidding." House ignored the remark, continuing.

"I've been researching…" he began again.

"Yeah. Let's see…drug implant into the pleasure centers of your brain. Sounds like fun. Like the kind of research we all did back in our college chem labs." She was being dismissive and it stung. Probably served him right, he reasoned. House's expression changed slightly, catching Cuddy's attention. His eyes sought understanding from her, begging her to comprehend the desperation that he had felt; still felt to put an end to his pain. To find something, anything, to put things back to "normal," whatever that was.

Pain and depression, intricately interwoven, one feeding on and multiplying the other into a driving desperation to a reset button that House knew really didn't exist. But he had to try. House was a master at diagnosis. The master. He could figure out the rarest of conditions and determine a course of treatment with his vast knowledge, understanding and eerie intuition. His own case, on the other hand, had eluded him as he had scoured journals, conference papers, monographs and the internet for clues; for breakthroughs; for anything that would get him off the pills.

In a way, his team was right. He was dying, just not of brain cancer. Each morning he held his breath peering into the bathroom mirror, scanning his sclera for any yellowing. It was a risk, taking the Vicodin, and the amount he had consumed over the years was enough to put his liver on borrowed time. He had known that last spring when he had convinced Cuddy to try the Ketamine. She had looked at him with sad, sympathetic eyes, as she had the other night, thinking he was dying. And then the Ketamine failed. He couldn't talk about it: to her, to Wilson, to anyone.

His father would tell him to simply suck it up; be a man. Stoicism _is_ something that can be beaten into you, after all. "No one cares," he had so many times in one way or another, "about your silly little paper cut. Put a bandage on it and get back to your chores. Now!"

As the joy of September faded into the freezing dampness of October, the hopefulness that House had dared to experience had dissipated into a angry hopelessness. He keenly missed running: the freedom of flight; the lightness of his step fueled by months of rehab. The taste of it still burned into his brain as a memory growing more distant with each passing day. He needed to recapture it before it was gone forever, buried beneath a toxic hopelessness and despair.

"I'd read about the Mass General study back in September. "

"It was for terminal cancer patients. How could you think…"

"The reason it was being tried on terminal brain cancer patients was because of the risk. It wasn't a cure for them, it was a way to test a drug on the hopeless, whose life expectancy was nil. It was a way." House looked down at his hands. He couldn't say much else without revealing the depth of his disappointment and frustration of having been outed.

"Wilson told me about your patient. The one who couldn't sense pain…" House stood, pacing away from Cuddy, stopping in front of his desk. He picked up a random journal and thumbed through it mindlessly.

"Wilson had no right…"

"You were going to…"

"I know what I was going to do. But I didn't. Even when I could have; when Wilson said I should have."

"Then why didn't you…" House looked back at her. She knew that answer. Or she should have.

"It wouldn't have been right." Cuddy heard the emotion in his voice and it broke her heart. "This study; the drug they were testing and delivery system could have…"

Cuddy finally understood. The drug was intended to treat drug-resistant depression. The risk of brain damage made terminal brain cancer patients an ideal group to test. But stimulation of the brain's pleasure centers was also tied into the sensation of pain. It would address both House's immediate physical pain as well as an related psych pain. "But House, the risk…this procedure…why would you…?" But she knew without his responding to the question. He was desperate. More desperate than he had been last winter when he begged her for morphine; more than when he decided to try the Ketamine.

"House." She walked over to where he was standing at the desk. "I'm still here for you if you need me." He looked at her slightly stunned. "Even if you're not dying of cancer."

"I need you." As she had the evening before in her foyer, she reached up and embraced him. She half expected him to make another grab for her ass. But the circumstances were so different. He returned the embrace, simply holding on to her. Simply grateful for her presence. Simply being.


	2. Chapter 2

Trapped in a Broken Maze

Chapter 2

"Hey!" Just when Cuddy was no longer wary of where House's hands rested, his left landed on her right cheek. The lower one.

"Ow! You didn't seem to mind last spring."

"That," she said emphasizing the word, "was different."

"Yeah. As in 'that was for your benefit alone.' I feel so used," he whined with no real malice. Cuddy slapped his hand away, more amused than she wanted to let him see.

"So, your patient. You did the procedure?" House turned from her, making his way towards the piano.

"Yeah."

"And?"

"Can button his own shirt now and everything," House responded flatly.

"You don't sound exactly thrilled."

"No…I am." House sounded hesitant. "Look Cuddy, It's late and I love these midnight conversations. Really I do, but I have to get my beauty rest or I'm just such a grouch in the morning."

"Yeah. As opposed to luchtime; or afternoon; or … I don't know…pick a random time." She turned serious for a minute. "If you're having second thoughts about the procedure…"

"Too late for that, isn't it."

"You did the right thing House. He couldn't even appreciate what he was doing. What would have happened to him when his father died or could no longer take care of him. He'd become one of those used up footnotes who everyone wonders about but no one really cares to know about. This way…"

House, no longer hearing Cuddy, had been drawn back to own composition, sitting now at the piano, playing softly. Cuddy sat beside him. "It's beautiful." She listened to the melancholy elegance of the piece as he played. "Who wrote it?"

"I did. Or rather I wrote the first part. Patrick completed it." Cuddy looked at him askew, puzzled.

"How…I mean when…?"

"I started this when I was 12. I'd never been able to figure out how to resolve the first theme. Patrick just knew. I was…" House began the piece again, looking so much at peace, absorbed in the music, yet troubled. He stopped suddenly, mid chord, looking into the distance.

"It's gorgeous." Cuddy whispered, breaking gently into House's thoughts. " All of it." He turned towards her, nodding slightly in acknowledgement. "You wrote it when you were 12? Your parents don't exactly strike me as the piano lessons type of people. Especially your father."

She wondered what sort of people would abuse their child and give him piano lessons. She shook off the thought, smiling at the image of the young rebellious Gregory House enduring piano lessons.

"They weren't. I never took piano lessons."

"Then how…?" She recalled her own enforced lessons and practice time. She had hated every second of those six years. She hadn't touched a piano since she was 15 when she finally convinced her parents that she'd rather be examining samples of pond water under her microscope than practicing "Moonlight Sonata."

House looked away, shrugging tiredly. It was just something he "did." Something that simply "was." A part of him. Learning to read music, to write down music was something he had picked up of necessity as a university student: another language to learn and absorb.

"It was a terrible choice for the father to make, House. You gave him the options and the alternatives. It's all any of us can do. The outcome, whatever it is…"

"Not our fault? Not our problem? What?"

"We have no way of knowing…" She didn't feel like arguing medical philosophy.

"He'll never play again."

"It wasn't your choice. From what I heard, you didn't even do your usual browbeating. Just laid out the options and left it to the dad. He won't even miss it."

"We don't know that." Cuddy sighed, concerned about House. He rarely had second thoughts about anything, at least not in front of anyone. House was playing softly again, a melancholy melody of random notes that seemed to hang poetically together, more skilled tinkering than actual playing. "I _am_ dying, Cuddy…" She froze, her eyes going wide at the non-sequitor.

"What…?" He felt her concern, even as he continued his gaze fixed on the piano keys.

"If I don't find something…don't do something… I've probably got about three years, maybe five. Max." His voice was quiet; emotionless.

"What are you talking about?" Cuddy scanned her memory. She kept coming back to Christmas eve; the OD. She was unconvinced even now that it was accidental and not intentional. Did he have some sort of death wish? Or was it something medical?

He continued. "I'm a bad candidate for a liver transplant. I'd never clear the committee's exclusionary criteria…" She couldn't argue with him on that. Not with his history; especially not on Vicodin.

"There are other meds…"

"That don't work for me…" He stopped playing abruptly. He sighed, exasperated. They'd been down this road before; had the same argument fifty times during the past several years.

"A pump would…"

"I can't. I…" Another road well traveled. House pushed himself up from the piano bench. He was exhausted and he was overdue for his meds. "I have to find something else. Something…"

"House. There may be no quick fixes. No miracle drugs; no miracle procedures. You, of all people, should know that… You need to…"

"To what? To find a better coping mechanisms? To get over it? Get in touch with my 'inner patient' and just suck it up?" He was pacing, but Cuddy could see that every step was an effort. She crossed to him at the far end of the room, placing a hand on his arm, stilling him.

His sudden anger dissipated in the air between them. House's eyes sought out his pill bottle. She followed him as he retrieved it in from his bedroom dresser. When he turned she was right behind him. House arched an eyebrow.

"Following me to my bedroom? Living dangerously tonight?" He sat on the bed. "I'm trapped, Cuddy. It's like being in one of those corn mazes. I keep thinking I've found a way out only to… Wilson thinks my designs are too grand. That I'm trying to leap over the maze and all I really need to do is take little steps. Of course to Wilson those steps have nothing to do with medicine. He thinks that all I need to do is try that good old 'people connection.' He thinks I'm depressed."

"You are. It's not like you don't have good reason, House… Maybe you should talk to Catherine… Maybe she…" It was a difficult subject, suggesting that he consult Catherine Harrington. She had helped him through rehab and some of its aftermath.

"You know I almost tried it?" Cuddy cocked her head, sitting on the bed next to him, wondering if this was another non-sequitor to leap-frog them on different conversational path.

"…Tonight. I saw my team sitting in a pub, and for a minute I thought about going in, sitting down and just… I watched through the window, Cuddy. I saw all of those people…laughing, drinking…I felt like I was from another planet. It's been too long…I…"

Trapped in a maze, she thought. It was a good metaphor for what afflicted House. Then again, he was good at metaphors. "I should go."

House was so rarely publicly communicative. She knew he kept any vulnerability well shielded from everyone, including her. It was a gift and a burden that he had disclosed so much to her. She wasn't sure what to do with such a gift, certain that any suggestion would be refused, any attempt at closeness would be rebuffed. "You don't have to leave." She wasn't sure what he was asking, unaccompanied, as it was, by lascivious comment or sarcastic remark.

"I do." She did know, beneath it all, what he was asking; what he was offering. And it was so tempting to take him up on it. To stay; to be with him. He was so easy to love when he was like this: unguarded and communicative. But she also knew it was fleeting, this moment. And if she stayed, he would retreat behind his fortress walls in the morning. And where would that leave her, she wondered.

He nodded, acknowledging what he already knew. House had no desire to trap her inside the maze with him. He stood, walking back into the living room. He seemed to be doing a bit better. "We'll find something, House."

"We?"

"We. You. Probably you. But tell me next time. Tell me what you're thinking, what you're planning. I am your physician, you know. Maybe I can help." House nodded noncommittally, seeing her to the door. "Get some sleep." Another nod.

House heard Cuddy's car engine turn. He sighed returning to the piano, playing his old Junior High School piece. As he came to Patrick's counterpoint he closed his eyes, silently dedicating the piece to the young man's new future outside the maze.


End file.
